(urth) Thecla's "Identity"

Mon Apr 8 10:08:26 PDT 2013

The Vulgate is online, with interlineal translations, at http://vulgate.org/

On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 10:04 AM, Ross Arlen Tieken
<ross.a.tieken at gmail.com>wrote:

> Oh and thanks for the Latin--I was translating backwards from the English,
> I don't have a copy of the Vulgate, unfortunately.
>
>
> On Apr 8, 2013, at 11:57 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>
> Rose:
>
> Some wonderful insights, with which I would pick but two nits:
>
> The feast in the forest is specifically a _perversion_ of the Eucharist,
> which Severian by his nature purifies (this is why his "copy" of Thecla's
> memories is more powerful than is usual for these feasts -- indeed she
> seems to be resurrected in him).
>
> And second, Jesus' last words in John (second-to-last by Tradition: we
> Catholics have a traditional view of the Seven Words from the Cross, and
> say that His very last words were "Father, into Your hands I commend my
> spirit") were not "Summatum est" but "Consummatum est," it is completed.
>
> --Dan'l
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 8, 2013 at 9:46 AM, Ross Arlen Tieken <ross.a.tieken at gmail.com
> > wrote:
>
>> You're more than welcome!
>> I would study good 'ol Julius, but he's doing something different with
>> occultism by incorporating a strange un-Hindu Hinduism a la Blavatsky.
>> Also, talk about career suicide. I'm already skirting sudden death by
>> studying anyone who was involved with nationalism... or Catholicism which
>> is almost as bad to the post-modern academy. Evola would be a highway to
>> hell in a handbag.
>> I also personally do not share his worldview and social critique although
>> I recognize its power. I think too much self-reflexive occultism &
>> esotericism is not a good thing; Orthodoxy is esoteric enough without
>> pulling arcane antics. Again, Pound didn't see that--Eliot certainly did,
>> and so did the Catholic liturgical theologian Odo Casel. You should check
>> out *The Mystery of Christian Worship*.
>> If I didn't know better, I'd say Wolfe had read Casel--that Severian,
>> when he takes Thecla's body and the Autarch's body, is participating in the
>> Christian Eucharist, along with Horn/Silk when he sacrifices at the Altar
>> of the Neighbors in *On Green's Jungles* (of bread and wine?! Could you
>> be any more clear, Gene?).
>> Wolfe has said that Severian "is a Christian," *not* an allegorical
>> Christ figure. But it seems that Severian is so Christ-like... a savior, he
>> carries a cross (Terminus Est; in English "It is the end." Christ's last
>> words: Summatum Est "It is finished" [John 19:30]). But Severian, if he is
>> a Christian (according to Odo Casel, Gregory Dix, and other orthodox
>> Catholic Eucharistic theology), he *is a member of Christ's mystical body
>> *! This, I think could help us understand Wolfe's assertion: Christ only
>> came once, but His mystical body lasts for all time. Wolfe accidentally (or
>> not accidentally, I can't decide which) engages with an ancient
>> understanding of Christian worship *constantly* throughout the Solar
>> Cycle. I actually don't see how it's possible to understand the Solar Cycle
>> without looking at Wolfe's Catholic Modernist bent.
>> But anyway, Evola's not playing the same card game. Or at least , he's
>> got some cards up his sleeve from a different deck.
>>
>> Also, don't steal this without attributing me, please. I'm sharing this
>> with y'all because this mailing list is such a wonderful idea. I'm writing
>> something about this as we speak--and I'll give y'all a link when I'm
>> finished.
>>
>> R
>>
>> Ross Arlen Tieken
>> Religious Studies
>> Rice University
>>
>> On Apr 8, 2013, at 9:57 AM, António Pedro Marques wrote:
>>
>>  No dia 06/04/2013, às 00:36, Ross Arlen Tieken <ross.a.tieken at gmail.com>
>> escreveu:
>>
>>  When I spoke of the Catholic modernists, I should have been more
>> precise. The modernists all have weird spiritual proclivities. Eliot wasn't
>> technically a Catholic either. I should have clarified what I meant: They
>> all have a mystical bent, believe in strong authority, and are inspired by
>> myth, myths, and mythic worldviews, and the middle ages. This leads to the
>> accusation of fascism (correct in Pound's case, dubious in Eliot and
>> Tate's, completely inappropriate in the case of Tolkien and Lewis) and to
>> the strong stroke of nationalism and ethnic myth-making in these authors.
>> Wolfe definitely shares these preoccupations. See
>> http://www.thenightland.co.uk/MYWEB/wolfemountains.html; an essay on the
>> importance of Tolkien which begins with the sentence "There is one very
>> real sense in which the Dark Ages were the brightest of times, and it is
>> this: that they were times of defined and definite duties and freedoms." In
>> this, he echoes a Chestertonian defense of the Middle Ages and Catholic
>> civilization. I also see in Wolfe an implicit defense of Neo-Feudalism and
>> a strongly relgion-centric worldview.
>> Pound was a bad fascist; he didn't understand that it depended upon the
>> same assumptions that modernity did, and paid the price for it--he failed
>> to see the 'real' problem on which his contemporaries easily picked up; not
>> just any mythos is good enough, there has to be real sticking power and it
>> has to based in some kind of transcendent truth/experience and allow also
>> for the intuitive human good. Fascism of course fails utterly at providing
>> this, but Tolkien & Eliot's strong ethnic (non-racial) Traditionalism and
>> mystical monarchism worked fine.
>>
>>
>>  Interesting. Do you analyze Evola as well?
>>
>>   This is what I'm writing on for my dissertation, and I thought about
>> including Wolfe although he's a little out of the time period. It's coming
>> back though, these mystical traditional neo-feudal myth-making monarchist
>> distributist Catholic artists.
>>
>>  On Dan'l Danehy-Oakes note: Distributism is the Catholic economic
>> theory; Marxism's assumptions about "the way stuff works" are absolutely
>> not compatible with the Catholic vision of humanity--nor is fascism, or
>> hyper-capitalism for that matter. Both depend on a pseudo-scientific
>> reading of humans--Catholics sort of aren't up for that.
>>
>>
>>  Precisely (whether one admits to the pseudo or not, which I do of
>> course).
>>
>>   Distributism (championed by Chesterton and Belloc, later by Eliot and
>> the Southern Agrarians in America) fulfills the requirements of Catholic
>> anthropology while seeking to correct the culture-killing nature of
>> transnational corporate capitalism. Look it up, tell me what you think.
>>
>>  Also, Wolfe is probably aware of Distributism and is a Catholic in good
>> standing with the Church.
>> http://ironicalcoincidings.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/inheriting-tolkien-pt-2-gene-wolfe/
>>
>>
>>  Thank you for the link.
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>
>
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
> _______________________________________________
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>
> Ross Arlen Tieken
> Religious Studies
> Rice University
> ross.a.tieken at gmail.com
> (361) 407-0100
>
>
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-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes
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